Desobsessão (Disobsession)

The couple's videos feature beeping electromagnetic field detectors, night camera footage and occasional scares in dark corners, but in the end they portray performances of a very peculiar version of what the national spiritist doctrine calls a “disobsession session” – a moment in which disoriented spirits receive the necessary instruction to move forward.

The couple do not present themselves as spiritists and refuse to identify with any religion, although they insist on respect for all. In an interview with the podcast Intelligence Ltda, Jaques and Tocchetto describe a particular worldview: that of God as a “vortex at the center of everything” and of humanity as the product of artificial insemination experiments carried out by extraterrestrials on prehistoric primates.

There is no way to consider them scientific investigators: they believe they already have all the answers, tools and explanations they need – their job is to put this “knowledge” into practice to rescue souls. It is more of a mythology assembled from many different sources, perhaps even a meta-religion.

Spirit Box in Guaratinguetá 

The KBC group, on the other hand, is much closer to the model of the American reality show Ghost Hunters, but with a particular outfit (and vocabulary) from the interior of São Paulo. Their YouTube videos are produced with animations and a soundtrack, edited to highlight unsettling moments and build suspense, which often feels forced. The team leader, João Paulo, does his best to keep the others in a state of suggestibility and constant apprehension. Their physical appearance and attitude are reminiscent of Jason Howes, the original leader of the American Ghost Hunters show.

The agile narrative technique and the more entertainment-oriented construction make the difference: even with less time on the road, the channel has three times as many subscribers as Jaques and Tocchetto.

There is no theory linking the readings of these devices to the presence of supernatural entities.

Their use of technology is extensive, including a so-called spirit box – a radio receiver that scans AM and FM frequencies and plays random snippets of broadcasts it finds. Ghost hunters interpret these snippets as spiritual manifestations, despite the fact that they are obviously words and phrases taken from normal radio station programming, in addition to noise and static.

KBC started as a humor channel (“Kid Boy Chechéu”) before specializing in the paranormal, and today it has a team of four investigators – João Paulo Fabrício dos Santos, Josenir Américo, Gleison Vinícius da Silva and Pedro Henrique de Melo Santos. It also has two permanent sponsors – a computer store and a “witch of power, healer of light” on Instagram, who offers consultations via WhatsApp.

Unlike the couple from the Caça-Fantasmas Brasil channel, who base their conclusions on the supposed special powers of Rosa Jaques and her particular mythology, KBC relies on the reading of its instruments – thermometer, electromagnetic field and, what seems to be the current star of the show, the spirit box. This gives a sense of scientific precision to what they do. The problem is that there is no consistent theory linking the readings of these devices to the presence of supernatural entities. There is not even a consistent theory about the existence of such entities.

As even Troy Taylor, host of the podcast American Hauntings, and author of one of the most respected guides on haunting in the US ghost hunting community, "Ghost Hunters’ Guidebook," equipment such as the electromagnetic field detector is used "in theory, not in absolute fact. We believe they can pick up distortions in energy fields caused by ghosts – we believe, but we don't know.”

"House condemned by a priest" by KBC Ghost-Hunters on Youtube

Haunted elephant in the room 

Ghost hunting using supposedly scientific equipment is an example of what epidemiologist John Ioannidis calls a "null field" – an area of research where there are no real effects, where all measured effects are nothing but errors, random fluctuations and biases. The physicist Victor Stenger explains:

“The uncomfortable reality that ghost hunters carefully avoid – the elephant in the tiny haunted room – is, of course, that no one has ever proven that these devices actually detect ghosts. The alleged connection between ghosts and electromagnetic fields, cold temperatures, radiation, strange photographs, etc. is based on nothing more than hunches, unproven theories and wild conjecture.”

Or, as historian Colin Dickey wrote to The Atlantic magazine:

“All this [ghost busting] technology works on more or less the same principle: generating lots of static and random effects, hoping to capture random noise and other passing phenomena. The ghost hunter, in turn, looks for patterns, momentary convergences, and meaningful coincidences. For the believer, that is where the ghosts remain: in the static, in the defects, in the smudges”.

If Brazilians interested in ghosts want to follow an American example, I suggest they leave Ghost Hunters aside and be inspired by people like Kenny Biddle – an ex-ghostbuster who is now dedicated to seriously investigating alleged paranormal phenomena, but in search of explanations that really make sense, not scares or audience numbers.